Data Shows County-to-County Migration Patterns

New census figures estimate where residents are moving across county borders. View data for your area.

An estimated 17.3 million Americans move across county borders within the U.S. each year.

Survey figures compiled by the Census Bureau provide a glimpse of where these residents are moving to and from. The migration estimates are now readily available after the agency launched its Census Flows Mapper tool on Tuesday, allowing researchers to query migration data for each county.

Some of the most populous California counties were shown to have the top number of movers between counties, as compiled from survey data:

County of Residence 1 Year Ago

Current County

Annual Movers

Margin of Error

Los Angeles, CA

San Bernardino, CA

44,020

+/- 2,509

Los Angeles, CA

Orange, CA

40,643

+/- 2,140

Los Angeles, CA

Riverside, CA

30,443

+/- 2,486

Orange, CA

Los Angeles, CA

28,450

+/- 2,015

Miami-Dade, FL

Broward, FL

25,246

+/- 2,121

San Bernardino, CA

Riverside, CA

23,942

+/- 2,017

Orange, CA

Riverside, CA

23,663

+/- 2,325

Maricopa, AZ

Pinal, AZ

21,969

+/- 1,659

Wayne, MI

Oakland, MI

21,919

+/- 1,795

Cook, IL

DuPage, IL

21,835

+/- 1,849

San Bernardino, CA

Los Angeles, CA

20,921

+/- 1,592

The Census Bureau compiled the county-to-county migration flow estimates from American Community Survey data collected between 2005 and 2009, with published figures essentially representing annual averages over the time period.

Most often, people move relatively short distances. Separate census estimates indicated about 64 percent of moves in 2012 occurred within the same county.

By analyzing a larger sample over five years, the agency is able to compute estimates for all counties. But even with five years of data, some smaller counties still have high margins of error.

If you’re interested in learning more about how these figures were compiled, please refer to the Census Bureau’s documentation.

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